


Zoalaster's Annotated Guide to the Gernsback Expanse (3077 Edition)

by The_Fenspace_Collective



Series: Candle In The Dark: A Peculiar Saga of the Sea of Time [4]
Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Fenspace
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, Pseudo-Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fenspace_Collective/pseuds/The_Fenspace_Collective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A guide for the curious and the confused to the worlds of the Gernsback Expanse brought with Fenspace to the Inner Sphere by powers unknown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

  
  
[Illust: The major worlds of the Gernsback Expanse ca. 3019. The sphere marks the Event boundary.](http://imgur.com/GpyoWb3)   


_Excerpt from “ Zoalaster’s Annotated Guide to the Gernsback Expanse (3077 Edition)” (Starfleet BuNav, Alpheratz, 3077):_

“The Convention and the United Nations agreed to begin a crash program of colonization within the 100 light year-wide bubble that marked the Event’s sphere of influence. The program was to establish incontrovertible claims on all the habitable and terraformable worlds within the Event boundaries, forward outposts capable of warning of further encroachment and, as a final fallback, caches of people and technology in case Sol itself was compromised.

The program began in earnest in 3021 with the first flight of the _RSS Marathon_ and the development of stutterwarp drive. The _Marathon_ was the first Tellurian-built jumpship, not designed to carry passengers or cargo but rather to prove that Tellus could in fact build a working KF drive. Stutterwarp was an offshoot of Fen KF research, more limited in overall ability than the normal jump engine but far simpler and cheaper to build. Major government and metagovernment work went towards developing and refining the canonical KF drive (resulting in among other things the EKF engine), while stutterwarp became the major driver of colonization efforts.

Predictably the initial planet rush was divided along Tellurian and Fen lines, almost literally. The established Fen colonies in 3019 – Pandora, Chiron, Gallifrey, Gwynedd and Vulcan – were mostly to the celestial ‘south’ of Sol, while many of the unclaimed systems of interest lay to the celestial ‘north’ towards Ursa Major. At first the established colonies only experienced a small influx of new migrants: Fenspace itself still had roughly 10,000,000 people in 3019, most of whom were happily content to live in their holdings in Sol…

(…) Despite the large number of potentially habitable worlds at their disposal, some on Tellus fumed that the Fen had already claimed the ‘best’ worlds in the Expanse and refused to do anything with them. The Convention neatly sidestepped the issue by opening several worlds, particularly Gwynedd, Gallifrey and the fallow Yggdrasil to sub-colonization subject to vetting by the claim holder. This particular decision led to the creation of some of the Expanse’s more offbeat nations like the New California Republic, the Queendom of Aquilonia and the City of New Old York…

(…) Colonization in the early planet rush was nominally financed through government or consortiums of governments. Nations with complicated relationships with Fenspace often found themselves scrambling for resources as the Fen controlled the main source of stutterwarp engines and all the practical experience on settling new worlds. This led Tellurian authorities to greater and greater cooperative ventures in order to secure a piece of the exosolar pie: the Eden colony of Groombridge 1618, for example, was founded under UN control with exclaves belonging to a dozen different nations.

Several systems were set aside from colonization during the Sphere-Con deliberations. Gatewood’s unique tidally-locked ecosystem was designated a galactic nature preserve despite Lalande 21185’s key position on the stutterwarp routes to Ursa Major and 61 Virginis, along with several examples of Gardener terraforming like the planet Arcadia and the moon Valinor. The colonization subcommittee also agreed that any further Gardener and Gatebuilder discoveries must be secured ‘for the common trust of the human race…’

(…) All in all the exosolar population jumped from less than 100,000 in 3019 to almost 1,500,000 by 3023, supported on the back of a gigantic fleet of stutterwarp jumpships and protected by KF and EKF-capable combat craft…”


	2. Gallifrey

  
  
Illust: [The planet Gallifrey.](http://imgur.com/f2GYx5u) The continent Wild Endeavour dominates the hemisphere in this image, with the minor continent Stopwatch off to the southeast, the western edge of the continent Citadel just visible to the far east and the antarctic continent Perdition visible below Stopwatch.

**Star Type:** G8V  
 **System Position:** 4  
 **Time to Jump Point:** 6 days  
 **Number of Satellites:** 2 (Doctor, Master)  
 **Surface Gravity:** 0.95 G  
 **Atmospheric Pressure:** Standard (Breathable)  
 **Equatorial Temperature:** 28 C (Temperate)  
 **Surface Water:** 49.15%  
 **Highest Native Life:** Reptile  
 **Population:** 18,700,000 (3077 estimate)  
 **Political:** Free People’s Serene Temporal Republic of Gallifrey + others  
 **USIIR Tech Level Rating:** A-D-B-B-A  
 **Recharging Station:** Nadir  
 **HPG Class Type:** S

The Tau Ceti system is very tightly-packed by most Inner Sphere standards: six planets crammed into an area roughly two AU in radius. This dense planetary formation isn’t unknown in the Inner Sphere, but it is much rarer to find such a system with a life-bearing world. Gallifrey (Tau Ceti IV) is a world surprisingly similar to Tellus for all the variation in the system arrangement. Discovered in 2009 TD by the Sozvezdie Soviet (then the Soviet Air Force), the planet is best known as one of the more Bohemian colonies in the Gernsback Expanse.

Gallifrey has a rotation of 38 standard hours and orbits Tau Ceti in 256.5 Tellurian days (162 local days). The planet’s axial tilt is 13.65 degrees, giving Gallifrey extremely mild seasonal variation compared to Tellus. There are two major continents, Wild Endeavour and The Citadel, with smaller island continents (the Stopwatch, Perdition, Rassilon’s Isles, Harmony, and the Untempered Schism) in the surrounding oceans. The planet is slightly less dense on average than Tellus, giving it a slightly less than one full G surface gravity. Planetary life is roughly 80% compatible with Tellurian biology, and can be consumed by humans with only minor preparation issues.

Sometime in the 1,000,000 years preceding human arrival to Gallifrey, the planet underwent a major extinction event comparable to the Permian extinction event on Tellus. The oxygen level in Gallifrey’s atmosphere and oceans went from roughly 29% to almost 13% within a very short time frame; this rapid anoxia killed an estimated 80% of all life on the planet. Within the last 300,000 years complex life has started to recolonize the continents, but there are still large swathes of Gallifrey that lie barren. In some of these more remote regions human colonists have begun introducing Tellurian lifeforms in order to help re-green the planet.

The planet is best known for its vegetation, in particular the silverleaf or Gallifreyan mallorn tree. Silverleaves are a broad-leaf evergreen tree found in the temperate rainforests of the western coast of Wild Endeavour near the original human settlements. As the name suggests, the silverleaf has a greenish-white leaf with a waxy coating that gives it a distinctly metallic sheen in Tau Ceti’s light; this particular color is dominant in Gallifreyan plant life, other examples including foilbushes (a coastal ground cover plant) and tingrass (a pseudo-grass common on the Stopwatch). Silverleaves occupy a similar environmental niche as the Tellurian sequoia; the average height of a mature silverleaf is 50 meters, with some specimens discovered reaching 100 meters or greater. Harvesting of silverleaf wood is controlled by planetary authorities to prevent serious ecological damage.

Gallifrey was originally settled by the Love and Rage Collective, a group of Senshi dissidents who took a Soviet offer to settle the planet in exchange for nominal autonomy. Love and Rage established the initial settlement of Ptichka’s Landing and the Free People’s Serene Temporal Republic of Gallifrey, the planetary metagovernment that operates in the Tau Ceti system to this day. Gallifrey was one of the planets opened to non-Fen expansion during the first colonization rush, and thanks to the Temporal Republic’s laid-back and eccentric air picked up more esoteric colonists, often artists and disaffected Westerners. Exclaves of note include the New California Republic, the FTA Fremen Combine, and the Citadel of Time.

The Temporal Republic officially joined the Federation as a member-state as opposed to a secondhand protectorate in 3028. Starfleet maintains several training bases in the Tau Ceti system including the Oceanic Training Center on the moon Davros (Tau Ceti VI.1).


	3. Gwynedd

_Excerpt from “ Zoalaster’s Annotated Guide to the Grantville Cluster (3077 Edition)” (Starfleet BuNav, Alpheratz, 3077):_   
  


  
  
_Illust: Gwynedd during the northern hemisphere’s summer, with parent world Annwyn in the background. Annwyn’s distinct blue color comes from Rayleigh scattering of warm methane in it’s atmosphere._   


**Star Type:** G0V  
 **System Position:** 3.12 (Moon)  
 **Time to Jump Point:** 8 days  
 **Number of Satellites:** n/a  
 **Surface Gravity:** 0.88 G  
 **Atmospheric Pressure:** Standard (Breathable)  
 **Equatorial Temperature:** 28.6° C (Semi-Tropical)  
 **Surface Water:** 68%  
 **Highest Native Life:** Mammal  
 **Population:** 52,387,000 (3077 Estimate)  
 **Political:** Fenspace Convention (United American States of Gwynedd)  
 **USIIR Tech Level Rating:** A-B-A-B-B  
 **Recharging Station:** Zenith, Nadir †  
 **HPG Class Type:** S  
  
† Jump points are patrolled and monitored by armed space stations. Travelers are advised that Gwynedd is an armed and polite society.  
  
Achird (Eta Cassiopeiae) is a wide binary star system roughly 19.4 light years from Tellus. The primary star in the system (Achird A) is a G0-type yellow star with six planets, while the secondary is a K7 orange dwarf with eight planets. The system was first scouted in 3013 (2018 o.d.) by the Greenwood Corporation looking for habitable planets near Tellus.  
  
Gwynedd (Achird A III.12) is the twelfth moon of the gas giant Annwyn (Achird A III), making it one of several known habitable moons within the Gernsback Expanse. Gwynedd’s natural rotation is considerably slower than that of most habitable worlds: one day on Gwynedd takes 97 standard hours to complete. The moon orbits Annwyn in 21.53 standard days (5.3 local). Gwynedd is inclined roughly 17 degrees relative to Achird A, giving it milder seasonal variation compared to Tellus. The long rotational period also gives the planet milder weather patterns, as the atmosphere is not as affected by Coriolis forces. The surface of Gwynedd is 68% deep ocean with four major continents and eight minor continents distributed evenly across both hemispheres. Gwynedd’s proximity to Annwyn, along with the other moons in the system, means that Gwynedd has strong, complex tides and significant geothermal activity.  
  
Life on Gwynedd is adapted to the long days and nights; the only exceptions being deep-ocean life where Achird’s light never reaches. Surface temperatures are roughly similar to a faster-rotating terrestrial world through atmospheric heat transfer, but the extended period of daylight means peak temperatures can reach 40° C regularly even in temperate zones. Gwynedd plant species have developed better water-retention measures than plants from similar biomes elsewhere to handle the midday peak, and most animal life on Gwynedd tends to go dormant as close to noon as possible.  
  
Genetic testing done in 3019 (2024 o.d.) revealed that Gwynedd was a terraformed moon, a true “garden world” in the sense that entities unknown had created and curated the Gwynedd ecosystem. The original seeds of Gwynedd’s ecosystem were taken from Tellus some point between 2.5 and 1 million years before the present. The people responsible for Gwynedd also terraformed other worlds in the Gernsback Expanse, earning them the name “Gardeners” in the public imagination.  
  
The Annwyn system is host to the most remarkable evidence of the Gardeners’ work: an automated terraforming station left behind in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. The station is 49 square kilometers in area and was built to support humanoid inhabitants, presumably the Gardeners. The platform’s discovery followed on the surprising find of a layer within Annwyn’s atmosphere where free oxygen was available in nearly-breathable quantities. Xenoarchaeologists believe the Gardeners were attempting to create a free-flying aerial ecology similar to ones developed by the Venus Terraforming Project. The Annwyn Platform has since been towed to the oxygenated layer and is open to xenostudies researchers from across the Inner Sphere.  
  
The initial survey was carried out by a Greenwood-financed expedition based aboard the starship GCS _Prydwen_. This vessel - like its half-sister, the famous GCS _Megaroad_ \- carried two Island 3 modules, one of which was landed to become the core of the colony's first city, Caernarvon. The other was left in orbit as a goods transfer point, zero-g manufactory, and planetary defense headquarters. Following with the mythic resonance of other named features in the system, it was christened 'Caer Sidi'.  
  
As befit the nature of the expedition, colonization from Tellus was heavy and strongly encouraged by the Greenwood Corporation. By the beginning of Vorax’s War the population had already reached 50,000 and was expected to double within the next three years. Most of the Tellurian immigrants came from lower- and middle-class populations in central North America and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Many of the colonists saw the new world as an alternative to the direction their home nations had taken, and their planetary government – the United American States of Gwynedd – reflects a certain idealised form of their motherlands.  
  
In the post-Contact political situation immigration from the Inner Sphere was also encouraged, many of which came from the Outworlds Alliance and the Taurian Concordiat. A small percentage, however, are researchers coming to join the study of Gardener Station. Scientists from as close as the NAIS and as distant as Niops have joined the research effort into the ancient station, its builders, and the aborted planetforming of Annwyn.  
  
Gwynedd is also the center of the Taliesin travelling school project, sending educators to the less-developed Periphery worlds in the neighborhood of the Gernsback Expanse.  
  
Gwynedd maintains strong ties with the CoDominium and the Federated Suns. The UASG government is unique among Convention nations in that it has both CoDominium and FedSuns embassies in its capital city, and UASG efforts have been crucial in maintaining diplomatic ties between the two nations at many crisis points over the last several decades. (See, for example, the Kittery controversy of 3059.) As a member-state of the Fenspace Convention and the United Nations they also maintain close cultural and trade ties with Tellus and their historical sister nations there.


End file.
